


you'll always be my favorite ghost

by orphan_account



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: :(, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Gen, POV Second Person, pretentious bible references bc it's dn we're talking abt here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 01:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15595530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Your brain jumps two three four steps ahead when you talk to someone, like you’re playing chess instead of having a conversation; you have no attachment to anyone except your creator, because your way of life doesn’t allow it. There’s something hollow inside you. There’s a lack of something.





	you'll always be my favorite ghost

**Author's Note:**

> i rewatched dn (but haven't glanced at it since middle school so i forgot this hoe dies and got sad abt it) and then listened to big god by florence + the machine six times and wrote this. also ive never read the novels or anything so im shooting in the dark abt his past here

 

i.

They find you nameless and alone, without parents but with the sound of bells ringing in your ears. You wonder what they are — church bells, a wedding, or maybe a — it doesn’t matter, though. You don’t remember what it was anyways. Tiled mosaics on the ceiling and a child was crying.  
  
You’re pretty sure it was an accident; they weren’t looking for you in particular, but they find you anyways. He finds you. And then there’s a hospital, maybe, clean tile floors and antiseptic and white sterile walls. You don’t like the smell of hospitals, you decide, and Watari says it’s just in case, just to check — check what? you think to ask, but realize you don’t care, because the nurse gives you a butterscotch pudding and you’ve never had one before and it’s sweet and soft. The nurse tells you not to eat with your fingers but Watari says it’s fine.  
  
The nurse doesn’t like the way you move, aborted movements and twitchy hands, and doesn’t like the way you do your best not to talk to her; you know this because she looks at you sideways — _Wammy’s kids always have these awful goddamn eyes,_ you hear her say — when she thinks you aren’t looking and grabs your wrist tight when she takes your blood pressure so you can’t jerk away. It hurts, the way her nails dig into your skin.  
  
Afterwards, she gives the all clear for something you don’t know because you didn’t care to ask, and you leave the antiseptic air behind. He wraps you in a coat that’s too big for you and mittens that aren’t yours and you stand in front of a big gate around a big big house. The bells are ringing again, somewhere in the city, and it’s the beginning of a new hour.  
  
He says _are you ready?_  
  
You think to ask, ready for what? but you’re not sure if you’ll like the answer. And anyways, anywhere is better than the place that you were, and Watari is nice and his house is big, so _I guess,_ you say, and Watari holds your hand tighter and pulls the gate open so you can both walk in together.

 

ii.

You solve your first case at ten. You don’t even know it’s a case, at first. Watari asks if you want to play a game, which you always do, and he gives you a sheet of paper with some nonsense string of equations and the bare bones of a cipher key and asks if you can solve it. 

It takes you a little bit of time. You’re good at math but you don’t like it. There is a long answer to the long equation, two rows of numbers on the whiteboard on the wall, and then the numbers are delegated into groups of three — you multiply, subtract and divide by three and the cipher links a number to a letter and by the end it spells out a street name. You have to try groups of two first, and it comes out as nothing, so you try again under Watari’s watchful gaze.  
  
Once you’re done, he asks _are you certain?_ You think to ask why it matters so much, but just say yes instead. He leaves with the street name written on a single piece of paper and comes back hours later looking tired and relieved all at once.  
  
_You helped save someone’s life today_ , he says, like it’s something normal to expect.  
  
Naturally, you’re surprised. _What?_  
  
_The location you deciphered helped the police find a kidnapped girl in London,_ he says, all gentle and casual like it’s something normal to expect.  
  
_Oh_ , you say, because you’re ten and you didn’t expect to save the life of a stranger. _Why didn’t you tell me?_  
  
Watari smiles that smile of his, vaguely apologetic. _I didn’t want you to worry about getting it wrong._  
  
Would you have been worried? you wonder. Would it have motivated you to work faster? You don’t know.  
  
Naturally, people want to meet you. Important People, maybe even more important that Roger or Watari. They ask you to show them how you solved the riddle — you don’t want to, but Roger promises you ice cream, so you go through the process faster than before because you know how to do it now.  
  
_You’re very good at math_ , a woman says. _You must like it a lot._  
  
_I don’t like it, you say. It’s just a pattern. Can I have ice cream now?_  
  
Roger says you can have more than one flavor (at once!) but that you should probably limit it to two scoops so you don’t spoil your appetite.  
  
_How about three,_ you ask, _for three numbers in a group?_  
  
You hear Watari laugh behind you, but it’s the good kind of laugh that means he likes what you’ve said, so you ask if he wants to share with you. He says he has to talk to the Important People, so he can’t right now, but thank you for the offer. You perch on your chair and dig into your reward and you feel proud of yourself. Like you earned something. Like you won something. That is the first taste you get, and you’re hooked, and maybe that is when the ugly parts of you start to show.

 

iii.

There was a crime scene when you were eleven, a couple cut up all bloody in a picture on a laptop. They wanted to see what you could gather from it. You cringed away, but a hand on your head tilted it forwards again and rested there.  
  
You swallowed down whatever was building in your throat and looked. The stab wounds were in the same place on both victims, bodies spread out on the ground, arms bent and hands clasped on their chests like they were praying to god. Ritualistic, you said, because you read the word in some criminal justice book you found in the library after you helped find a kidnapped girl. Ceremonial. Coins over their eyes like an Ancient Greek burial.  
  
Watari said you did good, even though you hardly did anything, a hand on your shoulder.

You were good at everything you did, even before that. As soon as you showed at interest in something, it was made available. You mentioned something about chemistry, and you had textbooks and your own chemistry kit by the end of the week. You thought puzzles were fun so you had stacks and stacks of them. They wanted to see what you could do, how much you could know, how well you could apply it. You saw a cut up couple when you were eleven and you helped catch the serial killer who did it and once that ball started rolling it never stopped.  
  
Crime scenes hardly do anything to you now; you’ve seen dozens. You’ve seen children and adults and everything in between. You’ve cracked bank heists and hospital bombings; you’ve seen the best and worst and most interesting of humanity from behind the screen of a laptop, because your identity is not the most important thing about you - that’s your brain - but it’s something you need to protect. 

You are Watari’s greatest invention. The best thing he’s ever made. You’ve put away so many Big Bads that someone’s bound to get you someday, but you don’t wanna help them out until they’ve found someone who can replace you.

The point is you’ve seen dozens of crime scenes. You’re barely scraping past twenty and part of you wonders if you’ve already seen everything there is to see.

Heart attacks are new, though. Dozens of them, all at once, multiple times, all over the country of Japan. There’s nobody cut up or ripped apart or poisoned or kidnapped, no large underground arms dealerships or drug cartels, as far as you can tell.  
  
It’s nothing like you’ve ever seen before. It’s horrible. It’s fascinating. It’s something twisted and compelling and it’s mass murder in a silent, quiet kind of way. You ask Watari to book the first flight that he can get.

 

iv.

Light is sprawled out in his bed, and you’re sprawled out in yours, both of your arms hanging over the sides; there’s no need to keep the handcuffs from stretching too far, but it’s habit at this point. Light must have been Kira at some point, you’re sure, even though you don’t know if you buy the part where he doesn’t remember.  
  
"What do you think of his plan?" You ask, because he knows your intentions by now and there’s no harm in asking. "His ideology?"  
  
Light is quiet for a long moment. You’re sure he’s awake. "I don't know," he says. "I think some part of what he says is true. Some bad people deserve to die."  
  
"Maybe," you say. But not by Kira’s hand."  
  
"So what, you just want bad people running around? Criminals living with no consequences?"   
  
"No, you say, I just don’t want a murderer playing god. It’s not like he stops crime before it happens. Somebody gets hurt either way."   
  
"But they won’t be able to hurt anyone again."   
  
"The damage is already done. He doesn’t stop the crime, he stops the criminals’ heart from beating."   
  
"What if that’s what they deserve?"   
  
"Not every crime can be measured equally."   
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Is stealing on par with murder? With rape?"   
  
"Kira claims he doesn’t kill petty criminals like that."  
  
"He has before, when it suited his needs. When he was compromised. He’s willing to sacrifice as many people as he needs to avoid getting caught."   
  
"Gods are selfish sometimes; look at the Greeks."   
  
"Are you saying Kira is a god?" It’s too on the nose, you think. Obviously, if Light were Kira he wouldn’t be so transparent about it. Which is exactly why he’s doing it. You can see right through it, and he knows it, and you know he knows. It’s all very circular and exhausting, but you’ll keep pushing until you know for sure.  
  
"No," he says, "don’t be ridiculous Ryuzaki." Like that’s his fallback. Don’t be any more ridiculous than you already are, with your security cameras and your stubborn way of pushing and your ugly way of getting the last word in.  
  
"Ten percent," you say, even though you don’t know if you mean it. The percentage has never even dropped below eighty, and you were right, maybe, but you aren’t anymore.  
  
He shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’s hearing, the way he always does when you press the issue these days. You just can’t seem to let it go, the way you grasp at every little thing that peaks your interest and squeeze until it loses its shine. You’ve always been bad at letting things go.  
  
"Okay," you say, because usually the tension is half the fun but tonight it’s just tiring, "maybe it’s only eight."   
  
Light smiles just a bit and you have no idea how you ended up here. You’re not chained to him anymore but you can still feel the metal around your wrist.

 

iv.

The rain pours down. You’ve stopped walking around with no shoes on when you’re outside, but a childish part of you wants to kick your sneakers off and feel the water. You don’t. The bells are loud today.  
  
_I wonder what they are_ , you say, _church bells, a wedding, maybe a_ — but you don’t finish, because Light says _come on, Ryuzaki,_ and _what are you talking about_.  
_  
__Sorry_ , you say, to Light and to your parents and to the nurse who didn’t like your eyes, _nothing I say makes any sense._

Your brain jumps two three four steps ahead when you talk to someone, like you’re playing chess instead of having a conversation; you have no attachment to anyone except your creator, because your way of life doesn’t allow it. There’s something hollow inside you. There’s a lack of something. The bells ring and ring and nobody hears it but everyone can see it, the gaping hole in your chest, in your heart, maybe. There’s nothing there. Maybe there was never anything there at all.  
  
Light says _let’s go inside, we’re already soaked_ , and that’s your fault, so you relent. You’ve never loved the rain, anyways. Rain falls like snow and you like snow even less. It’s your fault Light is soaked, and it’s your fault he was locked up for fifty days and a lot of other things are probably your fault, too, so you wrap your hand around his ankle and say _it’s okay, I’m good at this type of thing._  
  
You’re good at this type of thing. Mello got into fights and Near’s back cramps up from the way he sits and Watari’s shoulder sometimes ache with age. You hear bells in the background and you bend down before the man who might be trying to make himself a god, and you’re reminded of the verses the woman at your first orphanage used to read. Jesus washing his apostles' feet the day before his death. You think. You were never too involved with religion. After Kira’s declared himself a god you’ve been reading up on it; you want to see what could possess a man to aim for divinity.  
  
If Light’s your apostle, that makes you Jesus Christ. You’re going to die for the worlds sin’s, and maybe your own, and then you’ll come back because you’re too stubborn to die. The thought almost makes you laugh. You’re going to part ways soon, and you don’t know which way it will be.  
  
Funeral bells, you realize hours later with sudden, inescapable clarity. Your heart is stopping and the pretty mosaic ceiling flashes above you and your funeral bells are ringing; maybe they’ve been ringing since the beginning.  
  
Your killer catches you before you hit the ground and cradles you in his arms like you are something tender and fragile; he grins down at you, the epitome of victory — _I was right,_ you think desperately, but there is no breath left in you to speak, you were right you knew you were right, but you are not Jesus Christ and Kira is not your apostle and you will not come back to life in three days.  
  
He looks you in the eye and he knows he’s won and it is the most betrayed you’ve ever felt. The bells ring and ring and ring. You are nameless and alone.  
  
You close your eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah this is melodramatic but have u seen a single episode?? school starts this week comment to get me thru this year


End file.
